Resurgence
by Jonas Grant
Summary: A strange fog covers the whole planet linking present to the past and changing the whole biosphere to one incorporating all three stages of the Mezosoic era. Governments crumble in a heartbeat and the world's former owners take over once again.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This was not intended as a Dino Crisis fic, but I figured it would fit in nicely.**

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><p>Unlike the popular belief, there is nothing stopping man from taking a breakfast with Dinosaurs… Or being a Dinosaur's breakfast, all depending.<p>

Well, nothing but the fact it is impossible to travel backward in time.

Albert Einstein once said there were no laws of physic to prevent time travel, but that to do so, one would need and infinite source of energy, he also laid down the mathematical principles that would allow such travels, the idea being the normal life lives only in four dimensions, although there are hundreds of dimensions. It is impossible to go back in time, just like it is impossible for debris of an explosion (In this case, the Big Bang) to travel toward the center of detonation, but it is possible to find a dimension parallel to time trough which one can travel up and downstream to emerge at any given time.

Thirty years later, Nikola Tesla created a source of energy drawing power directly from the space surrounding it. Back then, the technology was crude, barely more powerful than a car battery and most prototype were destroyed for unknown reasons.

Now, more than a hundred years latter, the technology has evolved exponentially and, would Einstein and Tesla still be alive, they would agree that time travel should and most probably does exist at least on paper.

Most would wonder 'why not use it then? Go back in time, study the Earth in its infant stages and change the world?'

Tesla and Einstein would likely be very amused by this and their answers would most certainly revolve around 'How do you pull the plug on an infinite power source?'

Indeed, creating a wormhole trough a fifth dimension to link our time with any other would give us a two way access, but such a force cannot be controlled, it would be like trying to blow on a tornado to push it away from your house.

Such portal would take the form of a mirror-like liquid surface the size of a doorway, or, if more pessimist experts are right, a continents spanning cloud, linking both eras together like two photo negatives held over each others, because of Earth's rotation, the impossibility to close the portal and the basic concept of Chaos Theory that everything that can go wrong will go wrong in the worst possible way.

Of course, such risks are trivial when you think of all the possibilities and scientists from a NATO joint venture have started testing the technology in a program called Project: Poor Team.

Now; answer to all of the universe's question or face to face with the planet's former owners? Flip a coin.

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><p>There's always a mysterious guy in school, the dark and silent tough guy girls droll over and boys make fun of, but who has that 'Don't give a fuck' attitude that always inspire respect from even the most self-centered dumbass.<p>

The kind of people you write stories out of, make movies, sometimes, heroes, some might say. No matter how much everyone around them tries, they're still better at everything…

That guy ain't me. I'm the weirdo who's had thousands of adventures out of which some might even be real. Compulsive liar? Maybe, but I don't see myself as one, peoples are smart enough to tell the bullshit apart from the real deal and most of the time, telling these stories as mine just allows me to get a point across.

Right now, the dark mysterious guy is shooting at me while I'm laying flat on my stomach, surrounded by high grasses and a few small trees.

I'm located on a light slope leading down to a shallow stream I was about to cross before Kev shat on my position with his E-grip equipped god damned marker; that thing shits bullets like a fire hose. Paint and bits of plastic are flying all over the place and spraying my visor with pale green droplets.

The automatic fire stops and I hear Keven calling:

"Aren't you dead yet?"

For all answer, I push myself out of the grass and pepper the tree he's hiding behind with single-fire. The weird ass blue fog surrounding us coupled with the sprayed paint and my breath fogging up the visor means I can't see for shit, so I really just shoot blindly hoping to hit.

The guy let loose a stream of automatic fire in response and I find myself riddled with paint bullets; two in the legs, one just bellow the navel, two on my trigger finger and one in the face.

Fuck that hurts!

"Dead!" I call, still carried forward by the desperate dash… right before tripping on a branch and falling face first in the water. Kev's not the type that laughs at your face when shit happens to you, but he knows I never take offence at anything, so I get to be told how much I failed.

"Shut up." Something's wrong with my mask; it's too loose and feels somewhat lower that usual.

Closer inspection reveals I broke it near the left temple, just after the spot where the thing links up wit the face part, causing the thing to come loose and let the whole mask just hang on my face.

Nothing some duct tape won't fix, only not today, I guess, since I'll have to make my way to the cars to get tools, and we're many kilometers away from civilization.

I lift my hands in the air and get out of the stream, gun held by the cannon.

Seems the game is over for me, so I head over to the encampment, arms raised over my head or held in front of me in a Zombie-like shuffling. Hey, I'm a walking dead, ain't I?

The clearing that serves as our 'Dead' area is set down a pretty steep slope and surrounded by a thin stream of water. My boots, already filled with water, sink in the stream with all the way to my ankles.

We deconstructed the camp for the game, but I easily find my tent; it's the smallest and brightest of the lot, being a two midgets tent (The cover says two persons, but I'm alone and barely fit in it) and a fluorescent yellow tint. Next to the bunched up Gore-tex shelter is my rucksack, filled with food, water and ammo pods. The thing is a faded yellow, matching the tent, somewhat, and has tons of items strapped over it; axe, diving knife, multi-tool

This game is actually more of a week long survival trip, living like we were on a battlefield, fighting until we all run out of ammo food or water, and even then, some of us like to push it by scrounging the necessaries off the land and being conservative on the bullets. I went along with them once, since I had plenty of rounds left.

Never again; I spent three days gathering berries, eating worms and all around starving.

I loved it, although I'm too whiny to admit it.

Anyway, most people here are military or want to be, and I'm not really an exception, being a reservist, but I don't plan of making a career out of the army I got too much of a loud mouth and not enough discipline for that, up until very recently, I wanted to be a paleontologist, wanted to ever since I saw Jurassic Park when I was…

Hell, I'm born in 1991 and the movie came out in 1993, you do the math. But that didn't go very well; not good at school… Not good at much, all around, except surviving in the wild and telling stories at a campfire, so now I work with my father and grand-father in a semi-legal hunting business where we bring tourists hunting stuff on the spot of land my family owns in the north of Quebec.

They like sending tourists with me because I'm a good tracker, a lot friendlier than my father and not halfway deaf and more than halfway blind, like my grand-father.

And, of course, tourists love it when I tell them native tales about the animals in this place and show them how to kill their quarry in a way that respect the animal's soul. They think it's fun to watch superstitious crap like that, I think a little respect never hurt anyone.

Even the predators in the wild have some, why couldn't we?

And once every month, no matter the weather, I take a week to go with the boys on a Survival game .

The rest... well, most are here because they are aiming for SpecWar, Joint Task Force two, maybe CSOR, others want to become snipers and a some are actual veterans who think watching us struggle is fucking hilarious.

"Dead already?" Laurie, a vet, asks, her skull mask smiling at me.

The girl is sitting next to the campfire, straight in the middle of the camp. Wonder how xomes I didn't see her…

"So are you?" I reply, nodding to the orange marks on her sleeve.

She lifts the skull, revealing a smile that is even scarier than the skull.

"Yeah, but I didn't break my mask in the process." I notice she's holding a marshmallow over the fire with a pretty short knife. Heat must be hard to bear, but I guess it's the point.

I'm glad for the fire, as it keeps the fog at bay. Shit is creeping me out.

"Woulda been a shame…" I pick up a bag of ramens and my boiler. "Want some?" I offer the snipe-excuse me: Squad Designated Marksman…

"Nah, I'm good." As I advance toward the fire, meal in hands, I notice she has a scoped hunting rifle on her lap and that worries me, as I've never seen anyone in camp take out the real guns unless there's a predator around.

"Bear?" I question, pointing to her gun with my diving knife before using said knife to cut open my bag of noodles.

Laurie's face takes a careful expression. I'm not the most easily scared member of the team, far from it, I often go wild camping by myself, but I ain't really a soldier either and that makes her uneasy around me when shit hits the fan.

I am prone to panic, in fact, and can actually feel it creeping inside me right now, like mashed ice being forced down my throat. I just don't let it get to me… Yet.

"I don't know," She finally admits, "I saw something, though, small, fast, might have been a wolf, I don't know…"

What? All that fuss for a wolf? Shit all mighty what's wrong with that girl? I must have met half a dozen wolves while camping by myself; they're rarely ever a danger to an adult person and much less to a large group of them, unless they are very hungry.

"…But I doubt it; it was way too curious and not sneaky enough. Whatever it was, it wasn't afraid of me."

Okay, I'm officially scared shitless.

Laurie's graying pony-tail wiggles a bit in the wind as a round whistles past her head, making us both duck as a firefight breaks out on either side of the clearing, hesitantly at first, with just the occasional shot on both sides to be sure someone is actually shooting back and soon turning into a metaphorical shitstorm.

The woman rakes the bolt of her rifle before realizing she's not in Afghanistan. She the flips the safety back on and, in a sharp nod, drops the skull back before her face.

The firefight lasts a minute without anyone getting killed and both groups finally retreating.

I get back up to look at Laurie as she removes her mask and prepares another marshmallow.

"Was it like that in Afghanistan?" I finally ask the vet, awkwardly. I know it's rude and all, but I'm curious.

She actually smiles, "If it had been like that, I wouldn't be here to talk about it. Things were mostly slow paced, most of the time, like the desert was trying to lull you into feeling safe… No matter how hard you focused, you'd almost certainly end up slipping and then, shit would hit the fan, even if you were careless for just a split second, someone would step on an IED or a sniper would start picking your guys out."

I nod, deciding not ask about it again. Ever.

I like Laurie, she's one of the only people here I actually get along with, most other being so fucking stuck on religion or patriotism there is no way for us to hold a conversation without quickly coming to the point I need to leave or risk shooting them all in the face.

See, I was born catholic, but soon decided it was all bullshit and figured I'd find my own beliefs, as, when you think about it, my guess is as good as anyone else's, so I became an animist, somewhat like Native-Americans of old.

I'm about to ask her how her daughter is doing, but something in the forest emits an inhuman screech, causing my mind to go blank.

The scream is like a chainsaw… Yeah, maybe it is a chainsaw, we're in a forest, after all… But just as I convince myself of this, the scream begins anew, this time more articulate.

It's human and it's asking for help… Of course, Laurie is on her feet running toward it in an heartbeat and, not wanting to be left alone, I follow suit.


	2. Chapter 2

We run trough the bushes, jumping over irregularities and ducking under low branches, moving so fast the forest feels like a tunnel around us. The screaming has stopped, so we're really just running in a straight line, hoping we'll find something.

Laurie swaps a branch away and it slaps me in the face, blinding me long enough for my feet to get caught in something on the floor.

I try to yell watch out, what the fuck and shit at the same time, resulting in something close to "Shwatch the fout!"

I crash in the wet carpet of fallen leafs and moss, mud covering the whole front of my camouflage jacket before I can even catch my breath.

Looking up, I see Laurie disappear trough a pair of thick fen leafs, both the size of a man.

I roll on my back and look down; I tripped on some sort of thick gray-green vine.

Cool, it's like those you see in jungle movies! I didn't know there were things like that in Canada… Doesn't matter, the girl with the gun just left and I'm just lying there on my stomach watching plants and grinning like a moron!

Something moves in the fog to my right, just a dark shape in the blur of blue, quickly passing trough a spot of sunlight. If I had been blinking, I would have missed it.

Getting up is harder than it should be; my movement impeded by fear and a desire to keep really very quiet. I feel like I'm stuck in a cube of ice melting along my back and burning around my face.

My mouth open to call for help, but I strangle the sound before it gets out and drop to a knee.

First, let's check out what I've got:

Diving knife. Low quality, sturdy but dull. I use it for everything, from chopping wood to tightening loose screws on my gun.

Tippmann 98 Custom. Paintball marker with a foldable, AK-styled stock and flatline cannon. All in all, it's bulky and sturdy.

Low quality Zippo lighter. Not much to say, half full…. Or maybe it's half empty, I dunno.

Counter-Strike paintball vest. The Cadpat camo scheme is quite adapted to most situations, although right now, it's so muddied, it would be better for desert operations. Normally it matches the reservist uniform I'm wearing underneat, but now… Well, it still does, as the uniform is just as dirty as the rest. Most of the protection plates in the thing are plastic, but at least it's light and protects my neck and chest… A bit.

And that's all I have, if I get attacked, I can scratch the bear or whatever with my knife before shooting it with paint balls, set it on fire and maybe cause it an indigestion, thanks to my plastic padding.

Something moves behind me and I turn my head, slowly, to see what it is. A bit bigger than a dog, brownish and fast. That's all I can tell.

Might be a wolf, but it's not sneaky enough. Maybe afraid of something, something worst than me.

I look back ahead and my heart skips a beat.

It's white, with sharp, irregular fangs, its eyes black and empty, looking straight at me.

"Fuck! Damnit, Laurie, don't…" Her thin but strong fingers cover my mouth, digging in my cheek painfully.

When she speaks, it's so low I could easily mistake it for the wind, yet the forest is so quiet, it feels like she's screaming.

"Quiet, it's hunting."

Laurie is kneeling in the bushes barely a meter ahead to me, blending in perfectly with her Ghillie suit. I try to answer in the same tone, but it comes out hoarse and choked:

"What is?"

She aims her .22 behind me and I slowly turn my head back that way.

I see only shadows and trees, but I'll trust the veteran sniper and shut the fuck up.

The sun, to my left, is piercing trough the canopy and fog, shining on my position in such way that if something looks this way, it's bound to see my silhouette. My brains tell me to duck down in the mud, but instinct, that part of the human mind that feels more than it talks, says 'stay real fucking still', and common sense says to always trust instinct, so I go with the majority and don't move a fucking muscle.

There is a distinct smell of rotten meat in the air, a predator's smell and a good sign, as it means whatever stands behind me is under the wind and I'm not, meaning it can't smell me.

My heartbeat is so loud, I'm afraid it will give away my position, but I can't quite go and rip it out of my chest…

I feel like my brain is pulsing too, trying to beat its way out of my skull. Guess that would be called scared brainless…

Then, movement ahead scares the shit out of me and I feel my legs go weak. It's just Laurie, lowering her rifle.

"It's clear," She whispers, getting up, slowly, "Let's head back to camp."

I get up as well and step aside as she walks by me, heading straight in the direction the thing was, "What about…"

"Whoever was calling for help, he doesn't need it anymore, let's go."

Never seen her so cold before, she's usually the happy go lucky kind of person.

I'm a reservist, I should know what to do in this situation, yet all I can recall from two years of military education is how to spit shine my boots, navigate the land and shoot immobile, highly visible targets with some carbine that was phased out somewhere before Vietnam.

This time, I don't let Laurie out of my sight and stay a few steps back, to avoid getting slapped again.

"You see what it was?" I ask her while climbing over a half fallen tree. She ducked under it, but I'm a good head taller and it would be a tight fit for me.

"Yeah; tall, more than a bear," She begins, slipping between two parallel trunks while I must go around; too much bushes and too much spines in them… When I get back behind her, she continues her description, "Seemed to walk on its hind legs…" She sounds dubious on that last part, "…and I didn't see any forelimbs."

The Canadian north isn't Amazonia, it has seen many visitors over the years, yet none ever really bothered to search the whole forest for new specimens, as we all guess if there was anything else in here, someone would have seen it before. Guess that was wrong.

So, maybe we just had an encounter with some giant bird, like the Titan, who lived in the time of cavemen, or a completely new species of flightless bird of prey, I don't know, I'm no Zoologist.

Although, if I was to let my imagination take over, I'd say that thing might have been some sort of Theropod, a small one. Utahraptor, maybe, Dwarf Allosaurus, Nanotyrannus or Ceratosaurus. But that would be quite stupid, as these animals have been extinct for, oh, somewhere around sixty five million years.

When we reach the camp, there's a dozen people there already, most holding only paintball markers, but two are packing actual rifle. Everyone is scattered, some packing their stuff, other already prepared to leave and just waiting for the group to get moving. Thing is, when we arrived, there was about thirty of us.

We slide into the stream and walk into camp with our hands raised, so no one shoots us.

Once we're amongst the nervous crowd, I go see François and Laurie heads straight to her tent and begins packing. The guys with guns are watching the forest on the north and southern edges of camp, scrutinizing the thick fog with wide, terrorized eyes.

I guess I look like that too, but one of these guys was in Congo and the other is an experienced hunter, so I got to wonder what could scare them like that.

Or not, they're just human after all.

Even Frank, a guy I suspect to have worked for the CANSOFCOM long before Joint Task Force two came to be, looks shaken.

The man's rust colored beard and long hairs, coupled with his arms the size of my legs and big, thick nose, make him look just like those depictions of cavemen you see in books at school.

"Hey, le jeune," he greets me, in French, "tu devrais paqueter ton stock, on s'en va bientôt… "

I tilt my head to the side and try to smile, although it must be more of a grimace. My whole face feels like it's made out of wax.

"Qu'est-ce qui…" He shushes me and whistles twice, the signal we normally use to warn the others we've made contact. Everyone knows that it means to duck and shut the fuck up. So do I, but I'm a little slow on the uptake because I try to look around and find out what made Frank so nervous.

The fog forms a thick blue barrier around the camp only pierced by the slowly dwindling sun and camp fire.

If anything, the illumination of this place will attract every predator in a ten kilometers radius.

I kneel next to François and almost laugh when he pulls my knife out of its sheathe.

What's he gonna do? Engage the huge unknown predators in a knife fight? That blade is barely the length on my hand!

Changing his mind, he puts the weapon back in place and raises his marker, a speed ball gun with dual trigger.

There is no sound in the clearing, no wind, nothing. Even insects keep quiet. The blood pumping in my ears is the only sound, and it's deafening.

No wind. Then why is that bush ahead… Walking down the slope?

I raise my marker and slap Frank's shoulder. For some reason, that dumbass is looking the other way. He also has his gun aimed at something, I realize after a second, meaning…

Yup, there's another 'bush' walking down behind me, and another just a bit to this one's right, and two more near the one I'm aiming at. Whatever these things are, they're sneaking up on us and most likely aren't intent on pulling a prank.

"Everyone!" Somebody yells, the confidence in his voice making it obvious he intends to fight, "Run for it!"…I never was such a good judge of character.

Unfortunately, half the group listens to him and the other half, me included, hesitates.

Paintball and hunting has taught me one very important truth: There is no such thing as bad decision, there is only bad reaction to them and lack of adaptability. I just had a premium example of it, since the 'bushes', sprung into action by the sudden movements, decide to attack the six or seven of us that didn't get running.

My only reaction is to shoot them with a non-lethal, low impact weapon.

Oddly, this actually works; painting the predators a bright orange and causing the dog sized creatures to become completely confused as to what the hell is attacking them.

Once the three hunters ahead are practically glowing and the two behind start hissing at us in a threatening fashion, I decide to get out of there.

Of course, I can't abandon Frank and the guy's way too trained to disengage from a fight without attaining satisfying results, so I whack the man behind the head and scream, "Tu veux jouer au hero? C'est correct, mais moi je décalisse!"

The guy looks angry for a second, but then something clicks in his brain and his eyes widen in panic.

Never saw a man that big run so fast and being so agile. He reaches the edge of the clearing by the time most peoples are halfway trough.

My pack is right in my path. The boiler is still on the fire and the tent is out, but the sleeping bad, auto-inflatable mattress and all my supplies are still packed and ready to go, so I sweep the thing off the floor and stumble under its weight.

Something is running behind me, its tiny feet pounding the leafs and mud with discreet, wet sounds.

"Don't look back!" Laurie yells, "Keep the pace!" the sniper is ahead and to my right, aiming her gun straight in my direction.

I really don't like this… She pulls the bolt back and peek down the scope.

*Bam!* The bullet whizzes past my right ear, stinging and burning my cheek along the way, and… Well, I don't know, I guess she got whatever was after me, because the pounding stops and the sniper turns to leave just when I leap over the stream.


	3. Chapter 3

The drums are deafening, beating in rythm with the frantic spinning of the world. I think I'm sitting at a bon fire, but everything is moving, dancing from side to side in a blur pierced only by the hot yellow light of the fire.

The pendulum effect of the world makes it so that the trail left by the fire is like a mouth filled with sharp fangs, smiling at me.

The men and women around me begin their song, which I recognize as the tribal chanting appropriate for a boy's rite of passage into adulthood.

I'm twenty, guys, it's a little late…

For some reason, I can't talk, can't move and can't think straight… One 'peace calumet' too many, maybe?

"You do not use drugs," a soft, educated voice speaks to my right, "you never do, you never will," This last one sounded more like an order. I try to look at the man speaking, but only see a red-brown spot the size of a large dog. Somehow, it is not affected by the swinging of the world, instead shaking furiously on the spot like a junkie sitting on a dryer. "Your cunnings are the only advantage you possess; you do not have the luxury to loose them."

I try to ask him who he is and what's going on, but it seems the guy can read my mind.

"Do not be ridiculous, you know exactly what is going on." He seems disappointed in my complete genre blindness, "You were injected with some extinct animal's venom and now your body is fighting it, making you delirious. This my friend, is your own, fortuitous vision quest…"

A vision quest is a turning point in Naskapi children life, before puberty, to find one's intended spiritual and life direction. When an older child is ready, he will go on a personal, spiritual quest alone in the wilderness after a period of fasting. This usually lasts for days while the kid is tuned in with the spirit world.

Usually, a Guardian animal will come in a vision or dream, and the child's life direction will appear at some point. The child returns to the tribe, and once he has grown, will pursue that direction in life.

Nowadays, we just call it career orientation.

In any event, I hope mine will include getting dressed in the morning and, you know, not getting undressed as part of the day's work.

The red thing chuckles, "I'm afraid you will have to bear with budget cuts and let me sum up the situation." What? Aw come on! This is supposed to be a point in my life where I talk with my totem animal and find out what I'm good at, could they at least add some fireworks or something?

"No," the man answers, "there is too little time and too much for you to accomplish…"

So, what, I'm going to be some sort of hero? Save mankind from evil giant chickens?

That makes my interlocutor laugh, "Not quite, no, but if you want to survive, then you need to kick yourself into overdrive, as your earlier behavior was utterly pathetic." That was uncalled for! I'm still alive, right? Right? "One more such mistake and this is a state of being that won't last, now, let me tell you the plan…"

Oh, my Guardian animal has a plan! I feel so much better now!

"Yes, it seems your subconscious had to come up with an answer as your lucid self is too stupid to do it."

Subconscious? Well, I expected something more cryptic, like spirit world or something… Then again, that version makes more sense than an animal spirit visiting me in my hallucinations while I'm sitting on the passenger seat of a Ford pickup.

"No, you're really just talking to yourself," The voice explains, in a more friendly tone, "now, the plan is as follow; Do what the guy says, he is borderline insane; kept talking to himself ever since he found you about nonsense ranging from cavemen to the shape of your skull, but he knows things you will probably need and has good knowledge of the animals that attacked you."

How do I even know that?

"You are delirious, not dead."

Point taken, what now?

The animal, which I now identify as a very small wolf or, more likely, a coyote, bares its teeth in a vicious smile.

"Now you wake up and smell the ashes."

0

0

0

"…Did you know chimps have the same muscle structure as humans, yet can pull almost five times as much weight as we can?"

Uh? Where am I?

I see medical equipment around; vials, blood samples with different colored caps, schemas showing human evolution, a male human's bone and muscle structures and, right between these two posters, a skin-less depiction of some kind of monkey, all three of them hung on bleached white walls.

My throat feels raw and dry, like it was stuffed full of paper, and the beakers filled with clear liquids are very tempting.

"That is because we humans spend much more energy on brain power, making us much smarter, yet unable to physically best any of the creatures that now roam the Earth…"

The room I'm in is long and thin, the layout reminiscent of a camping car, or boat, with space economy and bumpy rides in mind. I'm all the way back, looking at the front of the thing.

The presence of a windshield confirms my theory that I am in a camping car, but the road beyond just makes no sense; it's a fucking jungle.

I live about five hours from the Canadian arctic, there are no palm trees in a couple thousands of kilometers around where I live, yet the path we are now on is flanked by tall, mossy palm trees.

An hand appears as whoever's talking gesticulates to emphasize his point.

I sit up and listen:

"…But modifying the proteins that way would cause brain atrophy! So I though of a gene-therapy inspired by that of Peter Weyand; using myostatin inhibition I could double the muscle power of any human being, I would also have to enhance tendons and bones resistance, but this is quite simply done. Of course, some safety measures will have to be bypassed for the good of all and some synergetic effects, both beneficial and nefarious are to be expected…"

Normally, increase in human performances is the kind of things that fascinate me, but right now, my arm is hurting just as much as my chest and I can see at least four small red dots on my elbow, so I don't feel very safe.

"Do you have any water?" Is the first sentence that comes to mind and the result is not what I expected; the guy brakes, hard. So hard I am thrown off the bed face first and land on the gray carpet covering the floor.

If he did make me stronger, he sure a heck didn't make me tougher or anything, and I feel the skin on my face and hands burn.

"Oh! My… I apologize, I did not know…" Looking up I see some guy looking half like an escaped madman, half like some genius scientist. Einstein with a beard, essentially…

He offers me a hand, but I don't take it, rising to my knee and looking down at my chest.

The lacerations have started healing and the bleed slightly, thanks to my short flight.

I guess this part of my memory was correct… How much of what happened yesterday was real, then?

The man hands me a bottle of mineral water and I quickly unscrew the cap to drink from it. I'm not stupid, I know I should drink slowly, so I stop myself after the first gulp and look at the man, despite my body screaming for more drinking and less talking.

"What did you inject me with?" I ask, pointing to my forearm.

I was too confused earlier, but I now realize I'm only wearing my cargo pants and a look around doesn't reveal much about where the rest of my stuff is.

Einstein seems to make the link between my question and his previous rambling, since he smiles reassuringly.

"Saline solutions, to keep you from dehydrating while your body fought the parasite."

Keep me from dehydrating? "How long…"

The man stands and turn around, "No time, Audré will answer any question once we get to the lab. We must leave now." With that, he sits back in the driver seat and I resume drinking.

So, let's sum things up; I'm in a mobile lab with some crazy scientist who's obsessed with improving human performances, was attacked by what I am almost certain were some sort of Raptor-like dinosaurs, maybe Troodons or Velociraptor, the tundra has somehow changed into a jungle before my eyes and I got… uh…

A quick inventory of the pant's pockets allow me to spot my Zippo and pocket knife, while a look at my belt confirms I still have my diving knife.

Well, I got some defensive options, at least.

Trough the windshield, I can see the bright green and lush forest trough the parallel walls of naked tree trunks surrounding the road. Something's not right, it looks like a bulldozer cleared a path and took great care to remove any single bit of greenery from its immediate vicinity.

I would say some king of flamethrower could clear a place like that, but that wouldn't explain the fallen trees littering the floor or the fact the trunks themselves were left intact.

Whatever happened here, I got a feeling the answer is very obvious, just not in my current mind set.

It's like trying to do math when you just woke up, no matter how smart you are, it won't make any sense until your first cup of coffee.

The bottle is empty, so I drop it in the sink, to my left, and begin exploring the place, looking for information on my new insane pal.

Trying and failing to open the doors at eye level, I decide all cabinets are locked and move on. There's a ring binder on the counter, right next to the sink.

I open it and frown at the first of many pages in contains:

"_Aardonyx (Afrikaans aard, "earth" + Greek onux, "nail, claw") is a genus of prosauropod dinosaur. It is known from the type species Aardonyx celestae found from the Lower Jurassic Elliot Formation of South Africa. A. celestae was named after Celeste Yates, who prepared much of the first known fossil material of the species. It has arm features that are intermediate between prosauropods and sauropods."_

The text goes on, talking about weaknesses, predators and behavior, but I just look at the three pictures glued to the page. They show something halfway between a giraffe and a lizard, walking upright with its massive legs under its body, not to the sides like reptiles.

A dinosaur.

These gotta be reconstructions or something! But they're Polaroid pictures and I heard those are extremely hard to falsify.

I flip trough the two pages of description and find another file:

"_Acrocanthosaurus (ak-r__ə__-kan-th__ə__-sor-__ə__s; meaning "high-spined lizard") is a genus of theropod dinosaur that existed in what is now North America during the Aptian and early Albian stages of the Early Cretaceous. Like most dinosaur genera, Acrocanthosaurus contains only a single species, A. atokensis. Its fossil remains are found mainly in the U.S. states of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas, although teeth attributed to Acrocanthosaurus have been found as far east as Maryland."_

Only one picture on that one and it's taken from afar. All I can see is some kind of blue T-Rex with a long snout and a row of spikes on its back, one feet on a Leopard tank's turret while its mouth is twisting the cannon out of shape.

Dinosaurs; my childhood dreams coming back to haunt the fuck out of me.

I feel us stopping and look trough the window, just over the sink.

A band of sauropods, ranging from elephant sized Apatosaurus to building sized Brachiosaurs, are walking around in a lake I know very well, the Lac au Dorés.

We're parked on a beach, a dozen kilometers east of my family's hunting camp, facing a scene that shouldn't exist.

On the floating island where I learned camping, two sheep sized, thick skulled, bipedal creatures are ramming each others and flashing their brightly colored throats in between impacts.

Just a bit further, on that peek where I caught my first fish, two small crested theropods –T-Rex like creatures, recognizable by their bipedal walk, large hind legs and tiny arms-, barely bigger than cows, diving their head in the water in sometime fructuous attempts to catch small fishes.

On the other side of the lake, I see things, halfway between buffalos and elephants move around lazily, stopping from time to time to do something I can't quite see all the way out here.

This whole scene is unnaturally quiet, with no ground shaking steps or chorus of chants from the animals, although I see them open their mouths from time to time.

I unlatch the window and push it outward. Indeed, as soon as the glass is out of the way, I feel more than I hear the kind of song you'd expect from such behemoths; a low and reassuring vibrations with more variations than my ears can identify, interrupted only by the squeals of annoyance the theropods emit when they miss their preys.

The thick heads emit almost mechanical sounds before each impact, and I can almost feel the power of each slam from the clap they make, close to that of coconuts banging together, but louder.


End file.
